From the Developer’s Desk: Markets in adCenter

Understanding of the adCenter market is key to setting up proper ad groups in adCenter. Let us take some time to understand the concept of market and subsequently the mechanism to select proper markets during creation of ad groups.

Concept of a Market

Market in adCenter is a set of publisher sites that are part of a single marketplace. In US these publishers consists of Bing.com and our syndication partners. Usually these sites have the same language. Typically these publishers are within a single country. This ensures that the pricing, editorial policies are uniform and appropriate for a market. The language of the site is a good (though not perfect) proxy for end user language. In the ideal case, the ads’ language should match the sites’ language for best end user experience. Any user that visits the sites in a market is eligible to see the ads for that market, unless location targeting is used to explicitly restrict certain audience based on their location. The below example shows the US market without any location targeting. In this case the ads can be viewed by any user irrespective of their location.

Figure 1: Ads in US Market without location

If the advertiser is only interested in showing their ads to certain audience based on their location, then they should apply location targeting to exclude the rest of the audience. The below example shows the US market with location targeting to restrict the ads to US audience only. In this case the ads can only be viewed by audience in US. adCenter uses various techniques, reverse IP being one of them, to determine the location of the user.

Figure 2: Ads in US Market with location targeting=USA

Market Characteristics

A adCenter market has certain characteristics. Here are some of main ones:

Language: A market has one language. This ensures that appropriate word breakers and other language processing algorithms are applied to queries, ads, keywords and landing pages. A side effect of this fact is that a particular country may have more than 1 market. E.g. Canada consists of English-Canada and French-Canada.

Currency: A market has a default currency for auction. For example the US market conducts its auction in USD. Don't confuse this currency with the currency of the advertiser account. An advertiser can be paying with Euro's but bidding in dollars in the US market. The account currency is the Payment currency. The bill is converted appropriately to the payment currency of the account.

Floor price: A market has floor price. This is the minimum bid in the currency of the market.

Editorial Policies: These are different by market and follow the local rules and regulations.

Support mechanism: Support centers are operated per market and suitable for the operations in a particular market.

How does market affect ad delivery?

When a publisher site makes a call to get an ad from adcenter, the market setting determines the ads that participate in the auction. Only the ads that match publisher's market are selected to participate in the auction. This ensures that the auction is uniform in terms of pricing, floor price, editorial policies and relevance.

How does market relate to language?

Language is one component of the market. The language is the language of the sites participating in the marketplace. This is a good proxy of the end user language. Typically an ad should be in the same language as the language of the marketplace for best end user experience. Different markets may have same language. E.g. US, UK both have English language.

How do advertisers select market?

When you create a new ad group, you will select the market or set of websites through which the ads are distributed.

For example, select English – UK if your ads are written in British English and should be displayed to sites like msn.co.uk. Select French – France if your ads are written in French and should be displayed to people who search on sites like fr.msn.com.

The language and market setting must be set when you create an ad group, and it cannot be changed. An ad group can have only one language and market.

How does market affect the editorial policies?

The editorial policies are unique to a market. They take into account the local rules and regulations to ensure adherence to operating in a particular market. his means the same ads and keywords may have different editorial status depending on the market.

What is the relationship between UI language and Market Language?

UI language is not related to a market. UI language is based on the user preference and can be set using Mysetting in the upper right corner of the adCenter Header. Irrespective of your UI language you can advertise in any of the adCenter supported market.

What markets does adCenter Support?

adCenter currently supports the following markets. In the UI market is shown as a combination of a language and country.